The NSVRC collects information and resources to assist those working to prevent sexual violence and to improve resources, outreach and response strategies. This resource section includes access to NSVRC collections and selected online resources.

This report describes research on victim and professional perspectives on the delivery of victim notification procedures, implementation of new victim notification processes, victim engagement within the criminal justice system, and recommendations for improvements.

Victims and professionals made five recommendations.

Law enforcement should not assume that a victim does or does not want to be notified.

All victims should be given the opportunity to be notified, and the decision for notification should be a choice provided to all victims instead of something imposed on them by someone else.

Mechanisms for notification should be flexible and thoughtful and incorporate choices for victims.

Victims should have a choice in whether their case moves forward based on DNA testing.

Evaluating our work helps us to better understand where our strategies are working and where we may need to change course in preventing sexual violence. This bulletin discusses ways that organizations can nurture a culture of evaluation and draws from conversations with preventionists at multiple state health departments and sexual assault coalitions.

A new report describes findings about unsubmitted sexual assault kits in Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan. A multidisciplinary team investigated the situation and found a number of effective and sustainable responses and ways to prevent the problem from recurring.

The team found several underlying “risk factors” that contributed to the large quantity of unsubmitted SAKs in Detroit, including:

Victim-blaming beliefs and behaviors by police.

No written protocol for submitting kits to the lab for testing.

Budget cuts that reduced the number of law enforcement and crime lab personnel.

High turnover in police leadership.

Lack of community-based victim advocacy services.

The final report gives a detailed look at their experience, including lessons learned from performing a census of SAKs, uncovering factors that contributed to the problem, testing of a sample of 1,600 kits, and developing victim-centered, trauma-informed notification protocols.

This Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) in Brief summarizes key points from "Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization — National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011." This report presents 2011 data from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) on the ages of first victimization and on the public health burden of sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence victimization, as well as the characteristics of victimization. Before implementation of NISVS in 2010, the most recent detailed national data on the public health burden from these forms of violence were obtained from the National Violence against Women Survey conducted during 1995–1996.

Increasingly, preventionists are working to prevent sexual violence at community- and societal-levels. Influencing public policies falls within these realms. This resource provides an overview of the key findings from Exploring alcohol policy approaches to prevent sexual violence perpetration, by Caroline Lippy and Sarah DeGue (2014). Potential prevention strategies are discussed, including policy advocacy to influence the availability and marketing of alcohol and the environment surrounding its consumption; anti-oppression, social justice prevention approaches; and collaborations across disciplines, research, and practice.

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This site is supported by Grant/ Cooperative Agreement No. 1UF2CE002359-02 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.